Here I write about various events I was involved in and ideas that inspired me. Recently, it is more of a linux blog because I have been doing a lot of work on it. However, off and on I write on various other things that my mind just can't let go easily.

Thursday, 3 May 2012

The "Google" experience

Earlier the "Google" experience was very simple. In the typical "Google" workflow, i.e. the workflow followed in most of its products, interfaces were uncluttered and never came in your way. However, recently they are becoming increasingly cluttered. Youtube, for example, has a lot many things on its homepage now. However, earlier it just had videos. When you go to Youtube, you want to watch videos and that was what it showed to you. Wil Wheaton calls this as a huge mistake on the part of Google. He is not alone.

Another important aspect of the "Google" experience was speed. Now I am experiencing considerable speed reduction in almost all Google products. Be it Gmail, Blogger or Youtube. They have implemented instant search but their faster search pages were much more helpful. I can always do without instant search. When I come to search page, I know what I want to search. Suggesting instantly only reduces the number of letters I type.

Next aspect of the "Google" experience is coolness. Stopping the code search facility is not cool at all. By coolness, I mean positive rapport with the open source developer. Google used to inspire developers worldwide; but it is not that cool any more. DuckDuckGo is way cooler than Google.

Semantic search is the milestone that Google and its competitors are heading for. Social sites like Facebook are becoming important because they have better results at semantic search but in a restricted domain. Same is the case with many other tools that are providing or have the potential of providing better results at semantic search in various domains. For the ads market, the better the semantic search result the higher is the increase in likelihood of the ad getting attention and being clicked. So, instead of ruining its own experience Google should work on finding ways of improving semantic search in more and more domains.